Nowhere is Home

The chic, if starkly white, store-front art gallery looked out over a run-down, decaying section of town. Although the real estate community said this neighborhood was “on the upswing,” and others called it “gentrifying,” most people agreed it was not a part of town that one would feel comfortable strolling in, after dark.

As Buck and Jackie approached the bright gallery, which seemed to glitter amidst the urban desolation, Jackie bent low to offer a 20 dollar bill to a homeless woman who sat huddled in a red blanket on the sidewalk, a few feet from the gallery’s entrance. She said nothing to the woman, as she handed her the bill, but smiled a respectful smile that Buck observed was simultaneously empathetic and detached.

Later in the evening, Buck couldn’t help reflecting that Jackie seemed as comfortable on the streets of Skid Row as she did rubbing elbows with the white wine-sipping “Art-ourgeoisie,” the dress designers, the daughters of British rock stars, the lipstick laden Beverly Hills matrons and their tanned and unfaithful husbands, who filled the Gallery’s shimmering space. Jackie, he mused, seemed at home almost anywhere--- a lovely contrast to his own naggingly persistent sense of feeling at home almost nowhere he had ever been.